


again the sun was never called

by usingmyoxygen (keithsforeheadtattoo)



Category: Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsforeheadtattoo/pseuds/usingmyoxygen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm ready," Biff says in a painfully convincing tone of voice. "I've got the tickets out of here for tomorrow. I doubt Mom would mind if she didn't see me again. …I'm liable not to come back."</p><p>The front porch chooses an uncomfortable time to sag creakily under Happy's weight. "Our father built this house," he blurts out, as if there were anything their father could do to keep Biff around that he hadn't already tried while he was still alive.</p><p> </p><p>  <b>CW: vaguely incestuish? i dunno? ultimately i think theyre just weirdly inextricable for adult dudes? but, CWs for safety!!</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. like ancient bruises

**Author's Note:**

> _I wish I'd see a field below  
>  I wish I'd hear a rooster crow  
> But there are none who live downtown  
> And so the day starts out so slow  
> Again the sun was never called  
> And darkness spreads over the snow  
> Like ancient bruises  
> I am awake and feel the ache  
> But I wish I'd see a field below  
> I wish I'd see a field below_
> 
>  
> 
> _I wish I'd see your face below  
>  I wish I'd hear you whispering low  
> But you don't live downtown no more  
> And everything must come and go_
> 
>  
> 
> \-- "Field Below", Regina Spektor

They'd first called him Happy back when he actually had been. He'd decided that Harold was unfitting for someone like him, beginning already at twelve to consider himself a man. Harolds weren't men -- not the sort of men Hap Loman envisioned himself as growing into. Harolds were the same sort of men as Bernards: the sort who, hardworking or otherwise, made a habit of letting themselves be tread on.

He'd chosen Hap almost out of nowhere, a bastardization of his Christian name's first syllable, further muddled by Linda who affectionately called him Happy and insisted in defense that it suited his then-frequent smile.

That had been the year he'd started the seventh grade. It had been the year, too, when Junior had shed his lesser title and transformed instead into Biff, the one-syllabled summary of the destructively self-sure monolith he became. His name had formed not out of insistence but had bloomed naturally; he had entered high school and, within a month or so, come home wearing it like a lapel pin.

Hap doesn't recall anymore who he first told the West Point story to. Most likely a woman, he imagines. In scant and contemplative times, he gathers an explanation; it isn't hard for him to unearth where he might've gotten the idea that girls would flock to the kind of guy that came back from school with nicknames.

It's the permanence to them that he struggles with. Happy winds up vaguely puzzled each time he reads his brother's letters: habit doesn't seem a strong enough force to keep a man using "Biff" as his signature nearly halfway into his thirties. It's probably a need, he surmises before trying not to. They'd each almost had bright futures once and both wound up men with nothing to show for their lives to date but a lingering pair of children's names.

\- -

Sometimes Happy goes places that remind him of childhood; mentally and literally. As much as he gets caught up in memories, he tries to relive them a little too -- go to some park where he played in grammar school, sit by a lake where he used to swim in the summers in between.

Being with his brother is like one of those places. Hearing his voice, his sleep-bogged breathing, his laugh which had grown scarce as he aged. Biff is so different now than the child he'd known, and yet, settling back into the bottom bunk on their first night at home together since childhood, Happy feels a familiar domesticity settle over him like a film. It's the most startling blend of comfortable and stifling, the two feelings which had always seemed to follow him in his father's house. Part of the comfort, he knows, are his memories, and part is his mother, and part is the furniture and the peeling wallpaper and warm, stale smell. Most of it is Biff, who, despite any fresh discrepancies, has retained, in doses, the nameless un-Loman-like quality that's managed to keep him afloat for years.

A single long-fingered hand dangles from over the edge of the top bunk. Happy examines it for signs of life but gives up this pursuit quickly in the decision that he doesn't care whether or not Biff is sleeping. He grabs at it impulsively but gently, guiding his fingers sloppily into the spaces between Biff's, and smiles when he feels him stir without pulling away. Hap is stubbornly determined to preserve this part of his life and if bluntness is required, so be it.


	2. i am awake and feel the ache

The Loman Brothers as an enterprise is a fallacy. The Loman brothers as people can hardly make head nor tail of themselves as it is. It doesn't seem impossible, though, or even difficult -- until late enough at night that Dad's skittering monologues have died out, when he sees Biff alone for the first time in hours.

They don't talk about it, which is the real warning sign. All that's transmitted is a look Biff gives him as he first wanders downstairs, sleepless again; Hap stands from a chair at the kitchen table to offer him a cigarette and watches something dark and hopeless settle behind Biff's eyes as he takes it.

They don't talk at all, going through a combined total of five cigarettes together in silence. Hap swears as he's falling asleep that night he can hear someone talking from the kitchen: "trapped," in a voice that he thinks (at first) is his father's.

\- -

"I'm sure you're still angry with me," Biff says from the doorway, hands in pockets. He has made it clear he's only staying post-funeral as a favor to Mom, and even then, only for an extra day. Happy isn't yet solid on the details of his own plans, but he knows they include both seeing his mother through the next month or so and calling up Howard Wagner.

"Oh, you're sure?" Hap scoffs, affronted by the understatement. "Then that makes two of us." 

Coming out of his mouth, it feels much more childish than he'd intended. The smile that crosses Biff's face, however, is too soft and genuine to be in mocking.

"I'm ready," Biff says in a painfully convincing tone of voice. "I've got the tickets out of here for tomorrow. I doubt Mom would mind if she didn't see me again. …I'm liable not to come back."

The front porch chooses an uncomfortable time to sag creakily under Happy's weight. "Our father built this house," he blurts out, as if there were anything their father could do to keep Biff around that he hadn't already tried while he was still alive.

In any case, the way Biff stiffens and closes off again indicates that was the wrong thing to say. They're both lost causes in their own respective ways, Happy realizes, watching his brother silently recede into the shadowed kitchen for a final time and trying to shake the temptingly plural "s" from "tickets" out of his consciousness.

\- -

Biff loads a single suitcase into the trunk of a cab. Happy watches through the kitchen window with the vengeful anger of a man who has forgotten what it will be like to sleep alone.

His first night by himself in his childhood room feels less eerie than he'd expected and miles more poignant. Of all the things he'd have thought could get in the way of his drive for success, he'd never have predicted a sudden, almost frantic longing for open skies and sunrises over hay bales would be the demon threatening to take him down.

He hopes the feeling will pass by tomorrow. He hopes through four and a half months of tomorrows until he finally books a train out, aimless, seeking to flush New York from his bloodstream and craving somewhere with stars.


	3. a field below

Months of postal silence leave Biff unprepared for the day Happy shows up at his door with two overstuffed briefcases and a fresh streak of premature grey above his temple.

"Business has been... slow." Hap states curtly, before dropping his luggage all over the stoop and initiating a forceful, moody embrace.

\- -

The house has a guest room, which doesn't seem to factor into Happy's immediate decision to invite himself into Biff's bed, hardly larger than twin-sized.

"Jesus Christ," Biff says, laughing the way he hasn't done in a while, Hap settling himself into a place in his arms he's had reserved since childhood. "You're irreparable."

Happy buries his face between Biff's neck and shoulder and tells him to shut up.

He's planned just far ahead enough into the future to buy his own train ticket back and already two weeks seems a criminally short visit. In two weeks, he thinks, he will be watching the same browned hills outside the window turn to concrete and swallow him up with a typical finality. He's ready, he acknowledges, with confidence but no contentment.

Biff does seem so much better, as though the months spent on his own vocations have healed him in some huge and literal way. It's good to see him happy, but even the possibility of that for himself isn't bait enough anymore. Biff is still the kind of man who defends his right to whistle in the elevator, and it's no longer Harold Loman's job to be happy.


End file.
